Shigeru Miyamoto interview: something old, something new for Nintendo

Shigeru Miyamoto says a blend of classic gaming and fresh ideas will help the
Japanese company thrive in a competitive industry.

Innovator of fun: Shigeru Miyamoto, general manager of Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis and Development division

By Chris Schilling

5:37PM GMT 13 Nov 2009

Video game giant Nintendo has enjoyed great success with its Wii and DS systems, which comfortably outselling their rivals. However, the global recession and a changing market have seen sales of Wii struggle recently, particularly in Nintendo’s home territory, Japan, and to a lesser extent in the West. Recent price-cuts have helped sales, but the company recently posted a 58.6 per cent decrease in operating income, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata claiming that the current situation “cannot be defined as healthy”.

Even with a sales increase this summer – thanks mainly to the popularity of Wii Sports Resort – Wii is selling fewer than 50,000 consoles per week in Japan, a real cause for concern with rival Sony’s newly-slimline (and similarly price-slashed) PlayStation 3 matching it. With both Sony and Microsoft planning new motion-based controllers of their own in the near future, has Wii lost its unique selling point?

Shigeru Miyamoto, general manager of Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis and Development division, doesn’t seem too concerned. Indeed, he’s flattered that the console he helped create is inspiring Nintendo’s rivals. “I should say that it can be taken as a compliment if others are following suit”. He admits, however, that “unfortunately [these developments] mean less uniqueness, and uniqueness is always what Nintendo has tried to realise”, inviting gamers to “look forward to our new challenges to discover this uniqueness.”

Yet it’s clear that Nintendo is struggling slightly to find its ‘next big thing’, after the success of the original Wii Sports - now the best-selling video game of all-time - and the health phenomenon that is Wii Fit. The aforementioned Wii Sports Resort has been selling very well since July, while the latter has a new, enhanced version in the form of Wii Fit Plus, with custom routines and new activities for exercise lovers. But other attempts to capture a large mainstream audience have been less successful – Iwata’s remarkably honest recent quote that “Wii has stalled” was followed by a frank admission that “we were unable to continually release strong software”.

One of the late 2008 releases expected to keep Nintendo buoyant in 2009 was Wii Music, something of a pet project for Miyamoto. The game was only a modest success, and somewhat derided by the specialist press, but it’s clearly something Miyamoto wants to revisit. “As far as Wii Music is concerned, I think it still has great potential. In the future there might be some new developments, so I think that’s one of the things that we want to look at from a longer perspective even though we don’t have any clear-cut ideas we can share right now.”

So Nintendo’s Christmas hopes rest on some very familiar shoulders. Company mascot Mario, perhaps Miyamoto’s best-known creation, makes a return later this month in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a follow-up to the 2006 DS game which recently hit the 20 million sales mark. It’s a comfortingly traditional 2D run-and-jump platform game with a new twist – the addition of three extra players. This lends a delightfully chaotic nature to the unapologetically retro gameplay, with a winning blend of co-operative and competitive play capable of raising shouts and giggles from even the most mild-mannered gamer. It should be another big hit, and Miyamoto has bold ambitions for the plumber’s latest outing – “because up to four people can play, even though we may end up just selling ten million, if we multiply that by four, forty million people would be able to play!” he laughs.

So what of the company’s future? Early next year sees another iteration of its ever-popular DS handheld – in a piece of typically contrary thinking from Nintendo, it will be significantly larger than the previous models, apparently to appease the older gamer struggling to read small on-screen text. Meanwhile, strong industry rumours suggest a high-definition Wii will launch in 2010. Indeed, Miyamoto alludes to this, suggesting Nintendo will “move with the technology when it makes sense to do so”, while insisting that “we are not simply trying to explore one single direction”.

It seems Nintendo is increasingly keen to be part of the recent trend toward user-generated content, with the superb free DSi animation application Flipnote Studio. “In a sense, [it] is similar to Wii Music,” Miyamoto explains. “By that I mean that they can be used as an editor, and that people can create something of their own by utilising this software, and compete against each other in the creativity of their works. Nintendo always wants to try to pour resources and energies into expanding that kind of category.” With a likely sequel to Wii Music and the pulse-measuring Vitality Sensor peripheral on the horizon, it certainly doesn’t seem as if Nintendo is short on ideas as it searches for its next hit.

In a difficult market at a time of recession, the Kyoto-based company is one of very few publishers still able to make a healthy profit, even despite the recent hardware slump. And with the pragmatic Iwata at the helm and creative linchpin Miyamoto as the driving force, Nintendo is arguably better-equipped than its rivals to navigate these choppy financial waters.